Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit — in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.
CHINUA ACHEBEThe sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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When we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
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And theories are no more than fictions which help us to make sense of experience and which are subject to disconfirmation when their explanations are no longer adequate.
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A man who does not lick his lips, can he blame the harmattan for drying them?
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Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too – If one says no to the other, let his wing break.
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People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that’s the time to do something about it, not when it’s around your neck.
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We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya: ‘He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.’
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When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
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Charity is the opium of the privileged.
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No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man.
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When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.
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When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate.
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If you have leaders who are prepared to incite group against group it is very easy to manufacture reasons and excuses.
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Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.
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If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’ If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’ But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.
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As a rule I don’t like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely.
CHINUA ACHEBE